


Little Boy Blue

by BlazePyron



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Fancy Lad Snack Cakes, Father-Son Relationship, Fatherhood, Gen, M/M, Post-Game, post-game spoilers, railroad ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-12
Updated: 2016-02-12
Packaged: 2018-05-18 05:51:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5900779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlazePyron/pseuds/BlazePyron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something has been bothering Shaun in the week since he left the Institute, and Logan realizes it's time to explain the truth of everything to his son.  Well, a version of the truth, anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Boy Blue

It was a week before Shaun brought the topic up to his father.

“Hey Dad, can we talk for a second?”

Logan was standing at the workbench in the Castle courtyard, working through a stack of surgical trays, cutting them apart into more usable aluminum pieces. He immediately stopped what he was doing, turning to Shaun.

“Yeah, kiddo, what’s up? Something wrong?”

Shaun glanced over at the corn and tato patch, seeing Hancock kneeling in the dirt and Macready standing on the wall above, leaning on the railing and watching him lazily.

“Can we talk in your room, maybe?” Shaun asked.

Logan paused, then slid the synth helmet covering his face off, placing it on the workbench. He looked at his son, trying to guess what was bothering him. It was still amazing to Logan how much Shaun looked like him. Pale skin, bright orange hair, a faint scattering of freckles. But he had Nora’s piercing blue eyes. They were cast at the dirt, Shaun scuffing his sneaker against the dead grass. Whatever the problem was, Logan could tell it was serious.

“Come on, then,” he said.

Shaun sat on the edge of his father’s bed, swinging his legs. His head still hung low, as if the questions were weighing it down.

“So what’s up, kiddo?” Logan asked, plopping next to him on the steel-frame bed, the mattress squeaking under him.

“Dad,” he began, “did you know me when I was younger?” His eyes were still cast down, his whole demeanor uncharacteristically somber.

“I can’t remember.”

The mattress squeaked uncomfortably as Logan’s stomach dropped. He hadn’t planned yet how he was going to talk to Shaun about everything. What happened at the Institute, what he was, why his mind had a ten year long blank space where his childhood should be. Logan opened his mouth to answer, but nothing was coming out. He stared at the orange mop of hair, his son still avoiding making eye contact, and he knew that Shaun was afraid that there was something wrong with him. Shaun knew something wasn’t right.

“What do you remember, Shaun?”

“I…” Shaun’s body tensed. “I don’t know what I remember. I keep trying, but it’s like a big room with the lights off and I can’t turn it on. Sometimes the lights are on, for just a second, and then they’re gone again. Like when I said that Dr. Watson said the surface was hopeless, I didn’t actually remember it until it was halfway out of my mouth.” His fingers gripped the edge of the mattress. “It’s almost like I wasn’t alive until I found you, like I was just there but not really.” He finally looked up at his father. “I know I begged you to take me with you, I was so afraid you were going to leave me, but I don’t know why! It doesn’t even make sense, I would have died! You blew up the Institute, and I was so afraid you wouldn’t care enough to save me, but that’s the whole reason you were there, right? And then, and then you,” he took a breath, tears starting to form in his eyes, “you said ‘who told you I’m your father’ like you were surprised I knew! I don’t understand any of it, Dad! None of it makes any sense!” The tears were streaming down his cheeks now, and his whole body shook.

It reminded Logan of the hysteria when he first met the boy, when he thought that he had finally found his son, stuck in a tiny little room with a door sealed shut, like an animal under observation. And that had been the truth, hadn’t it? He was only an experiment to Father. And when the boy started screaming, afraid that he was being kidnapped by a man wearing dirt-encrusted combat armor, his face obscured by a scuffed metal helmet, patrolman sunglasses, and a green bandana tied across his mouth, Father waltzed in. Said he was only a “prototype.” Like the child’s fear had been a flaw.

“Son,” Logan began, but stopped. He wanted desperately to just pull Shaun into his arms and cry with him. But he supposed that wouldn’t help ease his son’s worry. “It’s all ok, Shaun. You remember everything that’s happened this week? Everyone you’ve met?”

Shaun nodded.

“See? It’s not your memory that’s the problem.”

“Then why can’t I remember anything else, Dad? This week is all there really is.”

“It’s what the Institute did to you, Shaun. Do you want me to tell you the whole story? It doesn’t matter now, but if it’ll make you feel better.”

Shaun grabbed his father’s arm. “Please, tell me. I hate not knowing, I really do.” His eyes almost seemed to glow with their intensity.

“Fine,” Logan said with a sigh, “I’ll start at the beginning I guess.” He slipped off his boots and scooted backwards across the bed, crossing his legs, Shaun following suit and sitting across from him on the bed.

“So, two-hundred years ago, you were born. Your mother and I had less than a year with you before the Great War. One of the bombs hit Boston right as we were taking the elevator into Vault 111. I remember the way Nora held you, I was always jealous of how easy it came to her, and I was no more than two steps behind, making sure you two would at least make it. And then in 111, they gave us our vault suits and told us to get into what they called ‘decontamination pods.’”

“And they were actually cryo chambers?”

“Yeah, I couldn’t figure out why I felt so sleepy, but then I woke up. It was dark, and I saw you and Nora across from me, both asleep in the pod as well. Then the lights came on.” Logan swallowed, the memory still difficult for him after all this time. “Then a man and some scientists walked down the hall, opened up her pod, and tried to take you.”

“But Mom wouldn’t let go.”

Logan looked up at the ceiling. “God, she had just woke up from cryo sleep and a man was tugging on you and the first words out of her mouth were ‘No, I won’t let you take him.’ Not a single moment to figure out where she was or who they were. I’m still amazed, Shaun, she was so damn strong.”

“But he shot her.”

He really didn’t want to cry in front of his son, but that moment still hurt him in dozens of ways. He could feel how sore his hands had been, beating senselessly against the glass, begging soundlessly for them to stop. It had been a month, maybe two, before he finally could bear to listen to the tape Codsworth had given him. Hancock had found him on his knees in Shaun’s old room, sobbing as her voice played over his pip-boy. He had torn up the entire neighborhood for scrap, including much of his old house, but he refused to touch Shaun’s room. The only thing out of place was the lone spaceship remaining on the mobile. Logan had pulled it off and stuffed it in his pocket when he first arrived, just to have something always with him.

“Dad, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have pushed you,” Shaun began, but Logan shut his eyes and shook his head.

“It’s ok, Shaun, I want you to know all this. It’s just still raw, is all. The man took you, and then put me back on ice. Then they took you to the Institute, and they used your DNA to make the first gen-3 synth.” Logan cleared his throat. “They made a synth of an old man, and they called him Father, and every gen-3 synth that came after him was based on his design.”

“Father was a synth?” Shaun asked, cocking his head.

Logan nodded, smiling slightly at how comfortable the lie was for him. He knew that eventually he would have to tell Shaun the real truth, but he still remembered the breakdown Danse had had. He then quickly pushed Danse out of his mind. He didn’t need that right now.

“So, if Father was based on me, did that kind of make him your son too?”

He stopped breathing as the question stabbed him. The lie was still close enough to the truth to hurt like hell. “Sort of?” he croaked, “It’s still complicated. He thought I was his father, he’s the one that , ten years later, decided to defrost me and lead me to the Institute. But, Father wasn’t really my son, Shaun, he was the Institute’s son. The Institute made him into everything he was, everything he believed in.” Logan looked deeply at Shaun, placing his hand on his son’s kneecap. “I want you to understand, there’s nothing that you could ever do that would make me stop loving you. But the man the Institute made Father to be? I couldn’t see him as my son. It still hurt so much to do what I did to him, but I don’t regret it. The Institute did horrible, horrible things to people all over the Commonwealth, and Father was the one who told them to do it. The Institute had to be destroyed.”

“But if it had been me…” Shaun quietly began, looking down at the mattress.

“Listen to me, Shaun,” Logan said gently, tipping his son’s chin up so their eyes were locked, “you won’t ever do the kinds of things Father did. The Institute made Father, and Nora and I made you. You’ll never, ever be like Father, believe me.”

Shaun nodded slowly.

It was the opposite of fact, but it felt closer to the truth than anything else.

“So what’s the reason I can’t remember anything? I spent ten years at the Institute, why can’t I remember any of it?”

Logan leaned back, planting his hands behind him. “On the tape Father gave you, he says he wiped all your memories except for the fact that I’m your dad. That’s why I was surprised, I guess. There wasn’t really any way you could have known who I was. But I guess Father didn’t want any Institute secrets getting out.” Logan grinned at his son. “So, how was that for an explanation?”

Shaun grinned back, eyes squinting shut, the light making his freckles stand out. “It was great, Dad!” He opened his eyes, his smile fading as he became serious. “Thanks, though, really. I feel a lot better now.”

A knock on the door interrupted their bonding time.

“Oh, you’re back! Little early, isn’t it?” Logan said, smirking at the new visitor.

Shaun was off the bed and halfway across the room before Logan noticed.

“Oh no, it’s a super mutant! And he’s charging me! Oh noooo!” Deacon kneeled down and let Shaun crash into him, falling over melodramatically, Shaun giggling all the while.  “Hey, guess what Caboose?”

“Really, Deacon? Caboose? Does he even really need a codename?”

Shaun turned around and stuck his tongue out as his father.

“Um, duh,” Deacon scoffed, “of course the littlest Railroad agent needs a codename. And I think he also neeeeeeds:” Deacon reached into his coat, “some Fancy Lad Snack Cakes!”

Shaun gasped, snatching the package from Deacon’s hands and hugging it close to his chest.

“What do we say, Shaun?”

“Thanks, Deacon!” Shaun yelled as he scampered towards his alcove just next to Logan’s quarters. A small wall separated Shaun’s alcove from the hallway. Behind it was Shaun’s bed and a bookcase filled to the brim with different knick-knacks in various states of put-togetherness. And, Logan suspected, a hidden stash of snack cakes, unless of course he was eating them as fast as he got his hands on them, which was, Logan supposed, entirely possible.

“So, Charmer,” Deacon said, sauntering over, “guess you took rule number one of lying to heart.”

“And which rule number one is that, exactly?”

“Tell as much of the truth as possible.”

Logan frowned. “You heard that whole story, did you?”

“Hey,” Deacon said, throwing his arms in the air, “I’m a sneaky eavesdropper, I heard it all without even trying to. And, honestly, it was a better lie than I could have come up with.”

“You’re just slightly prone to exaggeration.”

“Slightly.” Deacon smirked. “But,” he said, turning serious, “you do realize that you can’t keep that story going, right?”

“Because synths don’t age. He’s gonna be like Peter Pan for hundreds of years, isn’t he?”

Deacon gave him a look.

“Sorry, pre-war story,” Logan said, grinning sheepishly, “it’s about a kid who lives on a magic island where nobody ever grows up.”

Deacon nodded slowly.

He probably thinks I’m just making that shit up. “Anyway,” Logan continued, “I figure I can keep it up for a year or two, and hopefully by then he’ll be able to handle knowing everything.”

“I don’t know, Logan,” Deacon said, shrugging, “the kid’s sharp, he’s already been asking me deep philosophical shit about what happens when humans die, and if synths are alive, and what it means if you put a dead person’s mind in a synth. Like, even I can’t just bullshit answers to that kind of existential crap. Way beyond my expertise.”

“He asked me yesterday whether I think his mother is watching over us.”

Deacon looked carefully at Logan’s face. He knew Nora was a touchy subject: always had been, probably always would be. He couldn’t really blame him, but Deacon preferred to make Logan cry as little as possible. He had once petitioned Des to change Logan’s codename to Crybaby. Des had just glared at him.

“So, what did you tell him?”

“I just said I didn’t know.” Logan drew a shaky breath. “The way he misses her, Deacon, it makes me miss her all over again. He didn’t ever know her, but he still gets sad about it. And the most Father had to say about her was that she was collateral damage. I keep trying not to think about what it all means, but I just can’t help but wonder.”

Deacon put a hand on Logan’s shoulder. “We all have regrets, Charmer. I saw him in that bed, too, he was down to a matter of days. You couldn’t have understood him any better than you do now. He wasn’t going to let you.”

“Yeah. I know. But in a way I’m glad Nora isn’t here. I don’t think I want to know what she would think. I don’t know if I could handle it.”

“Hey,” Deacon said, shaking Logan’s shoulder, “snap out of it, man, I didn’t know her but I know she wouldn’t hate you for what you did. And she’d love that little boy just as much as you do. Honest.”

Logan didn’t say anything, he just walked out of his quarters. He peaked around the corner, checking on Shaun.  
The boy lay on his bed fast asleep. A screwdriver lay in the bed next to him, and he was clutching the remains of a telephone to his chest, copper wires and circuitry all pulled out and tangled up. An empty box of snack cakes lay on the floor.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Feel free to follow my tumblr at [hamburgertrousers.tumblr.com](http://hamburgertrousers.tumblr.com/)


End file.
